1. Technical Field
Present invention embodiments relate to system configuration, and more specifically, to importing individual profiles for configuring specific system components into a configuration profile for configuring the system.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
In order to configure a heterogeneous software system containing different software components, each software component must typically be configured independently. This is accomplished either through performance of a series of manual steps, or with use of a tool. Tools for configuration of software components generally focus on a specific component within a potentially heterogeneous software system, and utilize a wizard format (e.g., a series of graphical user interface (GUI) screens) to perform the product configuration. Thus, extraneous tools are used to configure a software system since each component of the software system is associated with a corresponding tool.
In the absence of a tool, manual steps must be followed that can be tedious and error prone when repeated for configuring multiple instances of a software system. The usefulness of the tools become negatively impacted when the tools do not allow users to perform the required steps for the configuration. Even when a tool does allow for configuration of different heterogeneous software components, the configuration steps are separated into different parts of the tool, thereby requiring the user to typically configure one software component at a time. When software components are codependent and interleave configuration steps, this interleaving is significantly complex. In this case, the user manually switches between different parts of the tool for the configuration.
Profiles have been introduced that decompose configuration steps into tasks that are independently performed. However, each profile focuses on a specific component of the overall software system, where interleaving of tasks is difficult. Further, in order to upgrade to a newer version of a software system, each profile for a component is converted using a type of upgrade profile to upgrade each component to the new version required by the software system.